


susceptible to pain

by Spineless



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: (it's morse), Blood, Fainting, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Injured Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-14
Updated: 2019-08-14
Packaged: 2020-08-23 11:08:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20241859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spineless/pseuds/Spineless
Summary: Morse is wounded while chasing down a suspect and tries to return to work too early. Thursday is tired of his hands getting slick with his bagman's blood.





	susceptible to pain

**Author's Note:**

> Title from oregon trail by natural born kissers

Thursday sits him on a low brick wall with a squeeze of his shoulder that tells him to both take it easy and _stay put_. Morse sits, gratefully, not arguing for once, and tries to catch his breath. It’s not that he has a particularly strong affinity for chasing down suspects, he thinks between gasps, it’s just that he’s often the slightest officer at hand, only incidentally the fastest. Jakes might’ve been as fast as he was, but he never liked getting his hands dirty. And now he’s in America, so. 

Morse has a vague awareness of Strange and Thursday cuffing Creelman, dragging him off the rain-wetted asphalt towards the waiting squad cars. His breathing is still labored, coming fast and shallow, and his lungs burn, hot at the back of his throat. There’s a sharp pain in his left side that he first took to be a stitch, but it’s only gotten worse as he’s sat. Half distracted by Strange roughly shoving Creelman into a car, he slips a hand under his jacket. A fraying fabric edge draws the rest of his attention. Did he really tear one of his last decent shirts? He unbuttons his jacket for a closer look and he sees red spreading over the white cotton expanse, soaking in his jacket’s lining. 

“Ah,” he winces, filled with memories from a hundred years ago: dust in the bowels of the Bodleian, distant operatic warbling, the laugh of a madman. A hundred years later, the sight of his own blood still lightens his head, and he’s grateful to be sitting. Morse thought he’d dodged Creelman’s swipe with his switchblade, but clearly not. “Sir?” he tries, voice tight and quiet, and then he tries again louder, “_Sir?_” He knows he should try to stop the bleeding, but he’s having trouble moving. He swears he can smell the blood now. His blood. 

“”Morse?” Thursday calls, making his way from halfway across the lot. He gets fasters as he gets closer, and when he gets closer he can see the dark stain. “_Damn _it, Morse.” There’s a touch of anguish in his voice and eyes. 

“Sorry, sir.” His voice is wooden as Thursday pulls his jacket aside for a closer look. “I think he got me.”

“You _think_, aye?” Thursday is having trouble finding the actual wound among the blood and fabric, but at least Morse isn’t fighting him for once. Maybe this should worry him more. Finally, he sees that the source of the blood is not a gaping hole in his gut, spilling organs and viscera, but a gash, a bit wider and deeper than the one Mason Gull marred his side with ages ago. He sighs. Over his shoulder, he waves to Strange and turns back. “Morse? Still with me?” The boy’s eyes are half open, tight with pain, slightly glassy.

“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. Guess I’m not as fast as I thought.”

“Damn right, you’re not. This is going to hurt.” Thursday covers the wound with his hand and presses down, hard. Blood seeps between his fingers. 

Morse chokes on a gasp, his world suddenly very far away and tinged in red. There’s a hand on his shoulder, and he focuses on that pressure instead of his side.

“Come on, Morse. Stay with me.”

He grits his teeth, a low sound grating deep in his throat. “_Sir_.” 

“You think you can stand? Let’s get you to the car before this rain gets worse.”

“I can… try.”

“Here’s a professional tip, Morse, if you don’t know if you can do something––you probably can’t.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Strange has reached them now. “What’s happened?” The shoulders of his coat are dark with the increasing rainfall.

“Morse caught the wrong end of Creelman’s knife. I’ve got to get him to casualty, can you mind Creel on your own?”

“I’ll manage, sir. This is familiar,” he adds to Morse as he and Thursday hoist him between them.

“DeBryn––” Morse starts, but Thursday cuts him off.

“You’ve just closed your case. No need for the morgue, we’re getting this taken care of properly, you hear me?”

Morse makes a sound both indignant and hurt through his gritted teeth. He says something that Thursday doesn’t quite catch, muffled by petulance and pain, but he’s sure it involved the word _scratch_. 

The hands of the casualty surgeon are not DeBryn’s hands, but they are still careful and efficient, owned by a man who takes great care in his work. He moves quick but unhurried, and doesn’t try to ask Morse any asinine questions while he stitches him shut, even when he notices the thin white scar not far from the new laceration. Morse has his eyes closed and face angled away, and he’s thinking how there’s quite the difference between morphine and a mouthful of scotch. 

“Alright.” The doctor speaks to both him and Thursday as he peels off his gloves. “It’ll hurt most for the better part of a week. Fill your script, try not to move too much at first, and if it doesn’t get better, come back. I’d recommend taking two, three days off, but follow up with your police surgeon, he’ll know better. Then no rough action for at least a week, two if you can make it.”

“Thank you.” 

Thursday can still hear pain in Morse’s voice, but at least he can stand now. Back in the car, he asks, “How many days did I make you take off after we got Mason Gull? Three? Four?”

“The surgeon just said two!” Morse stares at him with wide eyes. 

“He also said three.” Thursday realizes how damn pale he is, and that he’s really not in the mood to argue. “An extra day of rest never killed a man. You lost blood and ended up in casualty. Catch up on some reading, listen to the radio. Hell.” He shakes his head and drives in the direction of Morse’s flat. 

“Sir––”

“Morse. God help the both of us if you say _it’s just a scratch_.”

* * *

“The Inspector will surely kill you if he sees you out here,” DeBryn says by way of greeting Morse, his voice a touch too cheerful for the damp morning and Morse’s strained demeanor. “How’re you feeling? Good on Thursday for actually sending you to casualty for once.” He finishes fetching his bag from the car and the two of them set off for the crime scene cordon in the center of the near glade. 

Morse puts his hands in his coat pockets. “He can’t pretend he doesn’t need the manpower. And better, thank you. I’ve been reading.”

“Lovely. Anything good?” 

“Not particularly.” Morse had mostly been thumbing through Euripides and war poets. He had two copies of a Siegfried Sassoon collection that was bemusing him, where did the second come from? Had he bought it thinking he didn’t own it already? Perhaps it had been a gift. Struck in his boredom, he’d tried to organize some of his possessions, but pain, alcohol, and memories distracted him. Pain, mostly, he thinks now, his hand ghosting over his side. The most moving he managed the first day was getting out of bed to change records. But he _was_ feeling better, and he couldn’t keep doing nothing. Not when there was always so much to do.

Detective Inspector Thursday turns, hearing them approach. His expression darkens considerably at the sight of Morse’s sodden, slightly limping form. He faces them fully, simmering in his anger. DeBryn, several paces ahead of Morse, sees him, then the body. His shoulders drop briefly until his composure falls in place. He turns back, meaning to tell Morse to wait, but he’s just slightly too late. 

The corpse’s hair is red. The man had been wearing a light suit when he died, one currently covered by a huge red stain. Red, like his hair, which is much brighter and lighter than Morse’s own hair, which tends auburn, except in the overhead sun. At first glance––the barest first glance––the body on the ground could look familiar, fleetingly, if one caught it at the corner of their eye. At second glance all the differences are stark, conflation impossible. 

Morse sees the body. He sees the blood and his breath catches in his throat, and he somehow blanches even paler. Everything feels light, light, light. DeBryn, still too far, reaches out the same time he steps back. He sees him shaking before he collapses, first to his knees, then onto his front. There are two red-haired bodies on the ground covered in morning dew.

The grass against his face is damp and gentle. It reminds him of various picnics he’s been on with friends and lovers, but he’s hardly had time to appreciate its softness when there are many hands turning him over. He groans when one of them pulls his coat open and gets too near his searing side. Pressure gone, the pain is actually worse when he’s on his back. He opens his eyes to thinning clouds and DeBryn loosening his tie and collar. 

Thursday really is going to kill him. 

“Deep breaths.”

“_Ah_.” He rasps in pain.

“I know, I know. Breathe through it. Deeper. Did you eat this morning?” He holds his wrist with ungloved fingers and looks at his watch.

Morse lies there and tries to breathe.“Tea and toast.”

“Well, at least there’s that. Tell me if you’re overcome by the urge to vomit, would you?”

“‘I’m alright.” 

“Didn’t I say you weren’t to show your face for three days?” The dew is dampening the knees of Thursday’s trousers. His face is set and grave as he checks Morse’s shirt for blood, but it’s remained white, nothing seeping through the bandage. He’s grateful that at least this one’s out in the country, no hard edges or concrete in sight. At least he didn’t also manage to tear his damn stitches. At least he doesn't have to scrub his hands raw trying to get the blood out from under his fingernails. “What part of _light duties_ involves plodding out to a murder scene first thing in the morning?” 

Morse wishes he’d taken an extra painkiller before he left his flat. “I was feeling better.” 

“Oh, evidently?”

“I _was_.”

DeBryn and Thursday each take a shoulder to help him sit up. He holds a hand to his side and breathes through his lightheadedness and pain. A headache starts to set in, low and seething behind his temples, and he covers his eyes with his other hand. He _had_ been feeling better. He’d slept, rested, read, drank tea and water, and scotch, and some broth, did a crossword. Did three. Ate a sandwich. But he knows Thursday is never going to trust his definition of _better_ again, if he ever did at all. He grits his teeth and bites back another unwise reply. The dew is starting to seep into his own trousers. 

“You need breakfast and bed rest. At least for a few more days.” DeBryn tries to sound kind and encouraging, and not like he’s condemning him to a slow death. Morse swallows. 

“Come on, up you get.”

The two men help him to his feet. Strange has made his way over, his arms out to help if needed. Morse sways in the green glade like a wildflower, but the DI’s grip on his elbow keeps him upright. The pain in his side still hasn’t quite started to fade, and it shows on his face and in his slightly hunched posture. DeBryn leaves them and Thursday corrals him back to the cars with a firm hand, away from men with probing eyes, and the reddened body. 

He manages Morse back into the car a little easier than he managed Creelman. “_Stay _here.” His scathing tone and the slamming door cut off any rebuttal. 

Morse stretches out on the back bench and quietly groans in the silence of the car. The walk has left him lightheaded, still, again. He lies back and breathes deeply, like DeBryn told him, and tries not to think about the mess he’s made. Or the body in the glade. Or red blood on white fabric. He shudders and squeezes his eyes shut. 

Thursday finds him like that a little while later. He looks as if he’s asleep, his delicate features lined only slightly against wakefulness and distant pain. Just asleep. Nothing more. He awakens instantly at the unlocking of the door and drags himself upright. He tries to catch Thursday’s eye in the rearview mirror and is ignored. They both know that a uniform could’ve dropped him home, but Thursday doesn’t trust Morse not to try something.

“Who was he?” 

“Never you mind. It’s not your case.” Thursday’s grip tightens on the steering wheel. 

“I’m not completely useless.”

“In this state, you are. Three days, Morse, that’s all I asked. Not a week. Three days.”

“_Sir_.” 

“Whenever you say you’re ‘fine’_, _I never know if you’re being honest, with me _or_ yourself. How many times have I told you that you’re not invincible?” His voice is sharp but carries old exhaustion. 

“I know I’m not.” He does. He’s all too aware of it. “I’ll be more careful.”

“Will you? I’m tired of washing your blood off my hands.”

In silence, Morse thinks, _out damned spot_. He hates that they’re having this conversation in a moving car, he hates that they’re having it at all. His anger is an edge of heat, like the cut in his side. “Do you think I seek out blades? Or fists?” Or gunfire, or brass knuckles? “I don’t. I’m only doing my job.”

“Not right now you bloody well aren’t. Do the ends justify the means if the means are your own body?”

Morse wants to say, _Yes, obviously!_ but holds his tongue. 

“You’re off tomorrow. I ought to make you take another damn week off.” They both know he can’t. 

Thursday’s words hang and Morse folds in on himself for the rest of his ride, sulking in the corner and thinking and deeply looking forward to the bottle of painkillers on his sink. The boredom of the next few days would kill him, he was sure of it. And he didn’t have many groceries left. Out the window, the world turns from green to brown and beige as they enter the city.

Thursday sighs, driving toward the familiar neighborhood, “Just do me a favor, Morse, and… don’t end up in casualty for a while. Can you do that?”

Morse eyes his flat at the end of the block. “Yes, sir.” A favor isn’t a promise. He hates breaking promises. 

**Author's Note:**

> maybe i do already have two separate fics about morse 1) getting knifed 2) fainting 
> 
> this isn't the first time i've written fanfic while also writing fanfic and it won't be the last (distracted from distraction by distraction) 
> 
> thanks for reading! thoughts, reactions, and feedback are always super appreciated!!


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